Corrections: 12:10 - Semantics mistake. As I explain a few seconds later, Polyus never made it to orbit. I was also suppose to say it is the largest 'unmanned' satellite ever launched. 25:55 - The orbiter shown is OK02.01 Baikal, not 01.02 Ptichka 35:43 - Oops, Roscosmos didn't exist until 1992 43:16 - there is a typo on the diagram: 'Oxidizer'
Getting a full auto-pilot Earth re-rentry, glide, and runway landing first try is actually kinda stunning. I imagine those programmers must've had some wild parties afterwards.
@@AlexKarasevFortran and Cobal have been a noose around old aerospace's neck. SpaceX got it right the first time too (Dragon 2). Using C and C++, it's almost trivial.
Before Scott Manley notices, when there is a stage separation animation, Buran shouldn’t be on the top of Energia, it should face the Earth, like the Shuttle did. I launched Buran in KSP like a 100 times, but still made that stupid mistake in the animation
Growing up in USSR, Buran was my obsession. I built a flying model with both, the glider and Energia carrier. Energia was powered by 4x 10N rocket motors and Buran had 2x 5N motors with the parachute deployment charge being used to eject them and transfer the center of gravity form the back of the craft, towards the middle. All of the flight control was fully mechanical. No electronics on board. Just pins, wires and timed charges executing the flight sequence. Buran flaps would automatically deploy on descent and Energia had a parachute. Towards the end, even though I tested Buran by itself, I wasn't sure that the whole system would've survived. Having spent a couple of years building that functioning replica, I didn't have the guts to let it do a full mission that could've destroyed it. I gifted it to a model museum instead. I don't even know who has it now, as it's been over 30 years. All I have are old black and white photos of me posing with it for local newspapers.
Mechanical flight control for a scale model? That sounds extraordinary. If you want to share the photos with me, I’d share them here in a community post (my email is enquiries@alex-hall.co.uk)
Gotta hand it to the Soviets, upon figuring out the Shuttle had no real economic incentive they went straight to assuming something truly sinister was afoot, rather than internal politics and bureaucracy bad enough to make even the reds blush.
Well, no. Sinister things were afoot. Shuttle was partly funded by the CIA. That's the reason is was such a phat cow. They said if you don't make it do what we want, we're not funding it, and it never would have happened. It wasn't bad internal politics- It was nefarious internal politics.
The Buran is probably one of my favorite spacecraft designs. By all means, it should have been a rip off shuttle, but it manged to be more than that in many areas. (though the economic and political situation in the soviet union prevented its use.)
I used to work with pressurised oxygen. Just cold, just 200 bar. The cleanliness needed was insane. We assembled parts in a laminar flow bench. We had special dispensation to use banned solvents to get everything clean. It was fanatical. If you'd told me then that you planned to put superheated 500 bar oxygen into a turbine I would have *guaranteed* you that the whole thing would catch fire in milliseconds. I would have been completely certain that it was impossible. I can still barely believe it even though I know it's been done.
@@Ariccio123 I pretty much covered it. It was basically pulling gear apart, inspecting it, clean it, replace the orings and seats, lubricate it with oxygen comparable grease, test and return to the customer. The "clean" was just really careful.
@@raffaeledivora9517 While the west never really adopted oxy rich staged combustion till after the cold war, the west germans had their own oxy rich staged combustion engine in the 60s
@@raffaeledivora9517the family of steels was first developed for the engines of the N-1 Leninsk moon rocket. That rocket finalized the rift between Korolev and Glushko. Glushko was Korolev's and the Soviets' main rocket engine man. Quite the character who felt overshadowed by Korolev and was saying dismissive things like "with the right engine, a yard fence would fly". He insisted on hypergolic (hence toxic) engines on the N-1 incl. first stage main engines. The inherent simplicity and robustness actually *might* have gotten the Soviets to the manned Moon landing first, but Korolev while by no means any more a tree hugger than your average Soviet executive at the time, felt that hypergolic on such a scale was crossing the line. At a Politbyuro session (top level Soviet meeting) there was a verbal spat where Glushko called Korolev a neatnick / clean freak ("чистоплюй") but the country leadership sided with Korolev. The N-1 engine design job went to Kuznetsov, a talented aircraft engine designer. He took the moon engine mandate and budget, and seeing that the race was by then unwinnable, and gave mother Russia not the engine she'd asked for but the engine he felt she ought to have. The magnificent closed cycle machine. Watch "The Engine That Came In From The Cold". The steel alloy that survives in this environment is technically from the "stainless steel" family of brews, but taking the idea of "stainless" to extreme. The English term "stainless" is very apt. It's not "rustless". Stainless steels cheat rust by forming a boundary layer conceptually similar to aluminum's oxide film. But the physics of a boundary layer is subject to the environment with which the hunk of steel is having that boundary. E.g. if you take certain stainless steels to very high altitude (top if Mt. Everest) the partial oxygen pressure is lower there and counter-intuitively, those steels will no longer be stainless there. So what the Russkis did in that engine was basically create a stainless formulation for a very, very high indeed partial pressure of oxygen.
Hi Alex, Maks from The Energia-Buran Archive here, I really enjoyed the video! You got a lot of stuff right that most don't. I have a couple of teeny tiny nitpicks and some extra information which I think is worth mentioning. 13:07 you mention that Energia and Polyus launched from site 110, when it was actually the Universal Test Stand and Launch Complex (UKSS) at site 250. 25:55 somewhat confusingly, this orbiter is neither 2.01 nor 1.02. It's 1K "Buran", serial 1.01. It sported the name Baikal on its side until early 1988, when the "Buran" graphic was painted on instead. Orbiter 2.01 never made the journey to Baikonur; it remained at the TMZ factory near Moscow until 2004, when it was moved to a pier near the Khimki reservoir and later moved to Zhukovsky and recently the Vadim Zadorozhny museum. The four ejection seat version would have most likely used the rails present on the flight deck and extend them to the mid deck, so left and right pairs of seats would be ejected almost in tandem. Vadim Lukashevich has pretty detailed renders of how that might look. The standard procedure for Buran would be to always fly with ejection seats with crews of 2, potentially the aforementioned ejection seats for crews of 4 or no ejection seats for crew sizes between 5 and 10. However, by ~1989 the likelihood of flying crews over 4 was *slim* and by the early 90s flight schedules only really mentioned crews of 2 with ~potential~ for larger crews later. The AL-31 engines were axed in late 1987/early 1988 and niches in 1.01 and 1.02 were filled in and covered with TPS. Second series orbiters (2.01, 2.02 and 2.03) had aft fuselages with no niches. Igor Sadovskiy, (Deputy Chief Designer at NPO Energia under Boris Gubanov after 1982) in a letter to NPO Energia General Designer Yuri Semenov after the successful maiden orbital flight of the Buran orbiter wrote: “The possible future installation of VRDU engines, removed due to a shortage of masses, will make it possible to land the vehicle along a flat glide path at any suitable airfield 'like an airplane,' i.e. without the special radio navigation equipment.” So there might have been a possibility to retrofit them, however small. Buran would pretty much match the shuttle in payload mass to orbit - the requirement was to match the Shuttle's capability, so the numbers were set at 30 tonnes to 51 deg orbit at 200 km, 20 tonnes to 90 deg at 200 km and 15 tonne return from orbit, which were essentially STS' 1972 specs rounded to the nearest tonne. Buran could not reach the 28 deg inclination Shuttle launched to - spysats and weapons targeting the USSR would fly on high inclination or polar orbits anyway, which Buran would be able to access and it could deploy Soviet military payloads as large as the American ones to the workable 51 deg inclination. Hypothetically, had Buran launched from Cape Canaveral, it would have been able to carry about 5 tonnes more payload, but of course that would never happen irl so treat it like a piece of trivia. BUT, it is important to note that the Energia core stage structure was about 7.5 tonnes overweight as of Buran's maiden flight, so the payload capacity would be lower roughly by that amount, certainly for the first couple of flights, i.e. couple of years. 1:12:44 1.01 was destroyed in 2002, not 2003 Sorry for the wall of text ;) I really enjoyed the video, keep up the good work! Edit: by the magic of RUclips my replies keep disappearing, so I'd like to "reply" to Artem here and say that I'm glad you found the archive useful!
Alright I’m pinning this - thanks very much for the corrections. And thanks VERY much for your work on the archive. It was an essential resource for this video, and I thoroughly recommend anyone reading this comment to go and check it out. There are so many amazing images there. I’m mad I never thought to correct for launch inclination when considering payload to orbit. That is so obvious in retrospect…..especially considering I discussed it in my Space Shuttle video.
Hello! I wanted to thank you for your work on the archive! I was essential during the work on 3D models! And it has a lot of rare and just awesome photos of this program
Yeah the shuttle espionage was kinda funny. The Reagan administration had cut the Soviets off from making direct purchases of reports through the Department of Commerce’s National Technical Information Service and the Pentagon’s Defense Technical Information Service. “Prior to that, they simply went from the Soviet embassy on 16th Street to the Government Printing Office on North Capitol and H Streets, provided the GPO with the name and number of the document they had gotten off the database, paid their money and took the documents back to the embassy,” said one intelligence official.
The KGB was considering dumpster diving or breaking and entering "nekulturni". Why wrinkle your suit if you can honestly come pay for your own copy fair & square? :)
@@JuPiTeR_0211 Quite right: "The swiveling rear exhaust is a licensed design from the Yakovlev design bureau in Russia, which tried it out on the Yak-141 STOVL fighter. It was all or nothing … If the propulsion concept didn’t work, we obviously weren’t going to be competitive.” There was also another big initiative of the sort, the supersonic flight research using the Tu-144 testing platform. ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20000025077/downloads/20000025077.pdf
Excellently done. I have stories I want to share from when I was in Russia as an aerospace engeering student studying "the design and building of large launch vehicles" at Bauman Institute in the "special machines" department created by Korolov. Now is not the time. But I do intend to share them here. Yes. Excellently done.
The Soviets were genuinely better than the USA at several facets of Spaceflight, notably they always managed to do it far cheaper than the USA(largely out of necessity for the smaller Soviet economy) which is why old Soviet rocket designs are some of the most used in history for a variety of customers
10:25 As far as I understand, the Zenit was retired from service due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine (which did not just start in 2022), as it was manufactured and assembled in Ukraine (Yuzhnoe), even though it had many Russian parts, like the RD-170 engine. I have always been a fan of the Zenit. The venerable Soyuz requires quite a complex operational set up before launching, including the attachment of the wooden sticks into each combustion chamber for ignition. By contrast, the Zenit was fully automated, it even had an interface for fueling and other purposes (I don't know the details) that was automatically connected by the transporter when bringing the rocket to the launchpad. It seems plausible that the high degree of automation was one of the factors that made it well-suited for the sea-launch platform. In Baikonur, there is one pad with a movable tower, which was eventually supposed to be used for manned spaceflights, probably it would have been deemed as a replacement to the Soyuz. Last thing I heard (and I haven't been up do date for a while), Russia was trying to built a Zenit-like launcher but using only Russian parts, intended to be a Soyuz replacement (Soyuz-5 Irtysh). It would even use the former Zenit launchpad in Baikonur. I've always found it so fascinating. I uploaded to my channel some rare and hard to find videos of the N1 rocket, as well as Energia-Buran, which were extremely bad quality, even for the time. Since then, much better versions from these videos have surfaced.
here is a documentary about the development of the Burana automated control system, sorry for the Google translation ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
your production quality just keeps increasing, not specifically an aerospace engineer but i will never pass up the chance to hear about these interesting projects and shoutout to Artem Tatarchenko i've noticed he does the 3d visuals for a few of your videos they look great
13:46 to give a little more detail- the payload was mouted with the engines facing upwards for reasons i can't remember. It was supposed to perform a 180 degree flip and light its engines before continuing up into orbit. Instead, it flipped 360 degrees, ignited its engines as they faced towards space, and launched itself straight down into the ocean.
You got the main point but I am not sure the viewer got it: The Soviet Union developed and built Energia/Buran PARALLEL to the Sojus/Saljut Program! For the US to be par they would have to continue the Apollo/Saturn Program including Skylab into the '90.
here is a documentary (part of it inserted at 52:17) about the development of the Buran automated control system, sorry for the Google translation ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
I can't express the excitement I felt when I saw this upload. Buran is something that has captured my interest for years and I'm glad it's receiving the respect and coverage it deserves. Your content is on another level. The production quality, research, commentary, visuals, it's all absolutely tremendous. It's a good day when Alexander the ok uploads Well done That intro was just pure awesome too
Intro starts. I think, “what is this? The RUclips algorithm has never known me this well, before.” I pause. I check the title. I yell, “he’s DONE it!” at nobody in particular. You’ve done it. You’ve made a video about Buran. God fucking bless you, you’ve done it.
i'm so sad i can't see the premiere cuz it's past my bedtime but i still want to kinda express my feelings thank you for reigniting my interest in space with your shuttle video, you're partly responsible for my 120 hours in ksp you might be "the ok" but your essays if i can call them that are really great and the challenger launch decision was the first book i read for myself in about 10 years i'm glad you blew up with that titan video, i hope you won't need to make anything like that ever again and all your stuff will be about great things humanity did, even if it includes some heartbreaking incidents that could've been prevented (i wasn't even alive when challenger launched but when i was looking at the footages of different STS launches words "go at throttle up" still strike something within me) anyway, again, you might think of yourself as alexander the ok but you are great and i really like it how you can be both dry and convening a huge spectrum of emotions at the same time your shuttle video is your magnum opus but with your research, with your love for the topic and with your passion it might change in the future thanks for doing what you do, i hope there's more to come
Hi. Thanks very much - hope you enjoy it when you have the time to watch. Yep after the channel first blew up, I tried 2 different directions: one making videos about the ‘best of humanity’ and one making videos about ‘engineering failures’. I tried the latter with a video about Virgin Galctic but I didn’t like making it. So, I can promise I’ll always focus on success stories. There will always be cautionary tales and lessons in risk along the way (as with the shuttle video). But I’ll never do anything like Oceangate ever again. Well not unless there is another extremely specific incident that falls exactly in my area of expertise!
@@Alexander-the-ok every success comes with or after a bunch of failures both apollo and souyz had failed their first missions, even tho the apollo one was named the first retrospectively but apollo landed six times on the moon and gave us one of the most exciting and unbelievable stories of the modern world, and soyuz was responsible for soloing ten years of uninterrupted supplies and crew transfers to the ISS while we should be in awe of the success of the both projects we also should not forget the failures that led to said success and you covering both is great and important and i'm genuinely happy there's someone like you who covers both aspects and sad i can't support you on patreon (not a question of money but a question of my location, i just don't have a way to pay for it right now) i'm a bit drunk right now but i would've wanted to say this even if i was sober: thank you for the work that you do, for videos you produce and for giving it to the world i spend about half of my conscious life on youtube (both on background and foreground) but you're my favourite channel and i want to see your videos while having nothing that can distract me and grasping for every word, intonation and picture you provide both with the video and things you say, because they can be more bright and colorful than the video itself again, sorry for the long response and sorry for being intoxicated but while i'm drunk i still only say things i want to say and the thing i want to say right now is thank you
That intro was so good! and i'm so excited for the MAKS video, it's such an interesting spaceplane, i love it. Thanks for your work. Buran was very impressive and honestly i'm happy we're seeing its legacy still resonate through Dream Chaser, the RD181 and the now dead zenit.
Thank you for this video, I really, really appreciate it. While I knew the landing had been automated, I wasn't aware of all the details (or that it was westwards!) and those animations about the automated descend are amazing!
here is a documentary (part of it inserted at 52:17) about the development of the Buran automated control system, sorry for the Google translation ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
26:00 the footage claims that this orbiter is 1.02 Ptichka, but is actually 2.01 Baikal, the third Buran orbiter, never completed. It can be moved by trucks because it's incomplete.
That bit at the end about your experience with Russia not being the "bad guys" really spoke to me. I was born in 2006, and I heard stories of my parents about the cold war, which seemed like a crazy idea to me. After all, Russia helped build the ISS, how could they be the bad guys? I spent my whole life with Russia being the good guys, and although maybe not entirely trustworthy, I certainly didn't consider them to be the enemy. I learned the Russian alphabet so I could read small bits of Russian, which is still useful to this day (I look for some really obscure documents, as I'm sure you do too), and I loved everything about their space program. Now here I am, back in a world where they're the bad guys again, and I feel like celebrating any recent achievements of theirs is siding with the enemy. I was never alive to see Mir in orbit like you did, but I still have a model of it to this day, and every time I look at it, it makes me sad because it's from a time when it felt like the whole world was working together to fly to space, a world we've left behind once again in the last decade.
I grew up during the cold war but never considered the USSR "the enemy" or an "evil empire". In saying that, I'm from NZ so while we are historically western aligned I never felt specifically indoctrinated or propagandized though there clearly would have been a bias in all forms of media. I was actually fascinated by the USSR & my curiosity couldn't be fed enough. I think two things that played a large part in stoking that curiosity were a friends older brothers 1970's-80's era stamp collection which included US & Soviet stamps with the different approach to their art & image they were presenting & walking along a beach in the middle of nowhere in NZ, the bottom of the world, & finding a dark or black can washed up on the shore that had cyrillic writing & that sent my imagination into overdrive. It couldn't have come from a mere fishing trawler, but a disguised fishing trawler on a spy mission🫢, though what it may have spied on down here I couldn't say, electronic communications maybe. That interest went on to become a love for more than a few Russian/Soviet writers etc etc.
If I can offer any advice, take what you're told, or meant to believe, in regards to Russia's current status with a grain of salt. What people may like to believe about Putin, one thing he is not is a fool or prone to act recklessly. He's had to be a wary statesman longer than many others. He's already pointed out why he felt Russia had to invade Ukraine & I haven't heard a thing to say its untrue. Though its a much larger discussion than can be had in this chat there has been many instances of US interference over a long period & despite many complaints or desired discussions Russia has been ignored, which was also counter to understandings that were believed to be in place & understood. For some perspective, it would be like Russia inviting & encouraging Mexico or even more appropriate, Canada, into a Warsaw pact type arrangement, right on the US border & despite any traditional history. If you know your history even a little, whenever the US has a strong desire for another country's "freedom" it usually means the freedom for the US to have a greater slice of their markets or access to their resources, as well as having the contracts to rebuild their recently shattered country. Not to mention how many weapons they can sell off as well. Just saying. Propaganda.
i think its important to remember that the west (the united states in particular) are absolutely not good guys either. its easy to see russians as uniquely evil because we see the atrocities they are commiting in ukraine happen live every day. however, america has the blood of koreans, vietnamese, cambodians, afghans, iraqis, syrians, palastinians, etc. on their hands. american economic policy in venezuala is making life impossible for average venezualans. american oil companies are poisoning rainforests in ecuador and killing anyone who dares protest. american backed dictators around the world are responsible for innumerous genocides, famines, and wars.
5:04 You suggest the Space shuttle was the superior project based on actual utility overlooking the reality “Buran”was specced to transform from it’s flight mode into a snarling mecha-vulture style Jaeger designed as the VERY last line of defence.
The fact that this video despite being hour long (if we talk only about the main part about the systems involved) still feels like a brief overview of the whole Energia, Buran, and related aircraft systems - speaks volumes on how huge, complex and amazing this whole thing was. And it actually was working Kinda feels like you should make a small series about engineering involved, like 3-part series. Just because of how much there is to talk about
The problem with doing series is nobody ever clicks on a 'part 2' video. My videos are actually all related to each other and cover a lot of follow-on concepts. So I will be revisiting Energia, and late Soviet propulsion design in the future....just under a different video title.
This is by far the most comprehensive Buran video I’ve had the pleasure of watching. None of the click bait nonsense, just well researched, well presented information. Great work as always
This is the masterpiece. Thank you a lot for this. You know, I walked by the building where Buran's manipulator is, most likely, stored. I knew that there is some old soviet manipulator inside but nobody told me what kind of manipulator it is. I learned it now, 2 years after leaving the country from your channel, that fact is pretty ironical and explains a lot...
As an enthusiast of Soviet postwar tanks and planes, in the Christmas of 2012 my dad gifted me an Antonov An-225 with Buran in 1/500 of Herpa and I was very happy and still today is displayed along other my scale models collection. I always wish that in the future some model company will release a Buran with Energia rocket, it would be very amazing.
Absolutely amazing spacecraft. It have a lot common features with Space Shuttle, but it never were a real copy of that. There were a lot of different solutions made... And don't forget, that it was a whole rocket complex, Buran-Energia
That's the best explanation and visualisation of the buran approach I've ever seen. And props for finding some really great original footage of both flights of the Energia.
Great video but I do have a slight correction The rd-180 does not have a perfect record as it has a partial failure. During the launch of Cygnus OA-6 launched on March 23rd, 2016 the rd-180 shut down approximately 6 seconds early. This forced the upper stage to burn for longer thus resulting in a mission success.
And if the statement was made to be talking about Atlas V instead of RD-180, it’s not a perfect record either, but down to the RL-10 on a Centaur shutting down 4 seconds early leaving 2 NOSS satellites in a slightly lower orbit than intended, negatively impacting both the start of operations and overall operating life. So whichever way you cut the ambiguous statement, whether it’s about Atlas V or RD-180, there’s an engine shutting down a few seconds too early leading to a disputed “100% successful.”
I am hooting and hollering at my screen about the possibility of an AN-225 video. There's an AN-124 that's been impounded at the airport here for a few years and it's fucking gigantic.
Ah yes, the infamous Volga-Dnepr AN-124 tail no.RA-82078 that had been seized in Toronto-Pearson International Airport for 2 looong years since the war in the East broke out.
I worked for a company that shall remain nameless in North Carolina years ago. We were modifying Sikorsky S-70 (The civilian/generic export version of the UH-60 Blackhawk) helicopters for the UAE. We were putting everything from FLIR and glass cockpit instruments to a rescue hoist and the Dillon M104 mini gun at each crew station. Having been a crew chief/flight engineer on these aircraft in the US Army for almost 10 years, I was actually recruited for the job and I absolutely loved it! I have so many stories and lessons that I learned during that time. I remember being curious as we were getting ready to start the test flight process on the first three aircraft just how the heck we were going to get these things all the way over to Dubai once we got them all finished up. I had never heard of the Antonov before this and I remember seeing pictures of it when the guys that had seen it before were trying to explain just how massive it actually was. Nothing could have prepared me for seeing that thing the first time. I had been in and around C5’s while I was in the Army and they’re impressive for sure, but the Antonov was just something else. We flew the helicopters in a flight of 3 up to Norfolk International Airport in Virginia in the morning and rented a hangar so we could fold the main and tail rotor blades and do the other minor prep work needed to allow us to winch them into the Antonov (side note: there was a VERY interesting and frankly terrifying interaction with some FBI and ICE agents as well as some other feds that didn’t feel the need to identify themselves when panicked civilians in and around the airport called into 911 and said that there were military helicopters that had the “Iranian” flag painted on them flying into Norfolk (150 miles South of DC and home to the largest naval base on the East Coast!). The flags on the tail were obviously not Iranian but I guess they’re similar. Also, we had a pilot and crew chief from the UAE in each of the aircraft along with a pilot and crew chief from our group and we were all in tan flight suits and helmets so, looking back, I kind of understand how that maybe looked a bit sketchy!!!). The Antonov landed and it was jaw dropping. It was also a Volga-Dnepr aircraft (could easily have been the same one that’s in Toronto now!) and it looked like it was literally just hanging in the sky when it landed. It drew quite a crowd of people when it taxied over to the loading area. We drove a semi into the rear door/ramp after they opened her up and kneeled the landing gear and then dropped the trailer in and drove the truck out the front. We put all of the loose cargo and spares in and then winched the 3 60’s in from the rear. The crew was a rag-tag bunch to say the least! The aircraft was rough. At least it looked that way. Everything was so old and a lot of things were dirty and unkempt. But the important things were taken care of. The crew spoke so/so English, enough to chat with us, and were super proud to show off their baby. I was one of the “lucky” ones that accompanied the aircraft to the UAE to assist in the test flight process after we had returned them to flight configuration. They ended up having this huge elaborate almost air show to welcome the aircraft into the country and we got treated like gods for a week! Anyway, that’s how I stumbled into a trip across the world on the Antonov!! It’s an absolutely incredible plane and it’s definitely from another era. Ever since, I’ve had a love for that plane and it will never go away. I hope that there are still a few left after the war is finished. It would be devastating to lose this piece of history.
@@lukeybukey3081 How is that a backhanded compliment? I just said his videos are really good and that I wished they got more recognition. I'm not really sure what else you wanted me to say.
@@sebastiaomendonca1477 apologies if that came across as harsh and especially if there is a language barrier. The construction you used in English reads very negatively, as if subscriber count and views is more important than the exceptional quality of this creator.
Correction I'd like to make: the second orbiter was NOT called Ptchika, as far as I can tell, it was actually meant to be called "Burya", which translates to "Storm". Ptchika was simply the nickname it was given before its official designation. It's just Russian for "bird" which I can't imagine being a very impressive name compared to it's counterpart, "Buran", meaning "Blizzard".
I would argue that Buran-Energia's method of booster recovery would have been better than just parity with the Shuttle. Recovery on land means there is no saltwater exposure, which would likely significantly reduce the effort needed for inspection and refurbishment. After all, the Shuttle SRBs were completely dismantled for each reuse, to the point that I don't think "the same booster" actually ever flew twice. And admittedly, it is with an even less maintenance-intensive method and with more modern technology, especially in the engines, but we are currently seeing what on-land/on-droneship booster recovery is doing for SpaceX in terms of economics.
Great work, not seen much of your stuff but I hope you are cutting this up and releasing it in chapters/series too, would give you best of both long and shorter forms of content and the audiences which would be more restrictive in their viwing time. Great work, deserve so many more subs.
When I was in school (for Aerospace Engineering) I occasionally encountered jokes about the American term for “oxidizer rich combustion” being “engine rich combustion.” Those apparently originated from former Soviet faculty And apparently the former Soviet faculty members had some *opinions* about injector design…
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I mostly watch videos while doing something else, a good deal of them are a sort of a background noise. Yours i've watched with full concentration. Thank you very much.
The author did an excellent job and treated with respect and thoroughness the information that is available on the project. But despite this, I can’t help but get rid of a vague feeling of arrogance towards the USSR that runs through the entire story. Perhaps I can clearly see this, because I live in a country that was once part of it and was once related to this USSR space program. It’s amazing how the same facts cause such strange interpretations in the West (simply because people were taught to think a certain way about the USSR). For example, discussions about specifically Soviet “paranoia” regarding US developments (a typically American cliche). While "paranoia" was a common reaction for both sides of the Cold War. And much more. Again, the facts have been researched amazingly, but interpretation... The whole story is permeated with, how to express it, misrepresentation? Of the thoughts of the USSR leadership , the intentions of the heads of the space program, the intentions of the military and so on. And a vague feeling of some arrogance when comparing USSR and USA space technologies. I'm wondering if I'm the only one who feels this way?
It’s worth me pointing out, i generally poke fun at whichever country is the topic of my videos. Prior to this, I made a video absolutely tearing into the US leadership decisions that essentially neutered NASA.
And this, friends, is why I love RUclips. You think you'll ever see something like this on network TV again? From those of us who remember The Discovery Channel in the 80s and 90s, thank you.
Maybe SkyShips ENG (also same guy from Horizon channel) could do, since the guy is Russian and may have the means to reach the closest Buran display article close by in Moscow.
This channel is an absolute GEM. You dive into topics that I read about and are never quite satisfied with the amount of information I receive. I receive notifications, and can't click fast enough. As an engineer, I really appreciate the agnostic approach you take to these topics. What's your background? As engineers, we appreciate good design, regardless of cultural or national origin (see V2 rocket). Likewise, as engineers, we are critical of blatant failures, regardless of cultural or national origin (see Challenger/Columbia). I so appreciate this channel!
Well, you've done it again, you've made me sad about a project that never got to achieve its full potential, and taught me a lot while doing it. Thank you!
Stunning job! I get the feeling that there was a *lot* of detail that had to be omitted for brevity. You know, doing an 9-hour long video isn't unheard of! (WTYP, Penn Central, yes it really was nearly 9 hours long.) Also, that intro was really well done. Nice nod to the Reagan-era promo video but with an understated modern feel.
The Space Shuttle also had the ability to land by autopilot; although, this was never used on crewed missions. It was only used in landing tests of the orbiter dropped from a 747 in the late ‘70’s.
Why do people actually complain about the Buran being a "copy" of the Shuttle? We are SO concerned with "fairness" on this here our globe that we would rather have slower technological progression.
The same people complain that "all cars look the same nowadays" even though that's the logical conclusion of ever more challenging targets of performance, efficiency, cargo, ergonomics, comfort, and occupant and pedestrian safety.
@@EmyrDerfel True! There really is true, almost singular optimization for your tech. One way is always going to be the best (if not overall, in the critical categories). Therefore the BEST tire and the best frame (hi I know nothing about cars, only aircraft), and the best engine, it makes sense that it would take on a specific physical form because its performance is based on how it travels through an atmosphere.
The "new cars look the same" thing can just be "these are all far away from my frame of reference". Personally, I think all 70s cars look pretty similar, all 80s cars look pretty similar, and all 90s cars look pretty similar.
Yeah all cars from any decade look the same. Its not fair to take "modern cars" and compare them to how cars looked over literally the entire rest of the history of cars!
It really blows my mind how a titan sub video pops off and we have these AMAZING long form videos covering the history and technological nerd shit that keeps my mind spinning. You are a total rockstar! Get this man to 100k!!!
I watched the AN 225 come into the Abbotsford Air Show in 1987. Due to my connections with the rcaf and a pilot who did a test flight in one of their fighter planes, I got a good look inside it. They had two folded up helicopters inside it still and that was after, after removing more than 100 tons of cargo supplies I asked the crewman refueling who was the only one who knew English really well if they could play soccer on the inside and they said a few of the members sometimes played badminton in it. One of my favorite photos of it was doing a huge wide turn past the far end of the Airfield with the lower wing tip within 100 ft of the ground. I found myself saddened that the Russians in their invasion of Ukraine thought it necessary to destroy this aircraft. Visigoths
New to the channel, amazing stuff. That Intro was badass. I love the style of your videos. I can put them on in the background while working or driving and have excellent listening, or soak it up watching it while in bed. Keep up the great work.
The documentary was amazing, up until the point you touched on modern politics. The russian government isn't trying to forget the Buran, it's just that nowadays RosKosmos consists mostly of corrupt idiots. Rogozin's biggest sin isn't the fact he's allegedly a neonazi, it's that he knows jack sh!t about space industry and enjoyed his time as the head of RosKosmos while it lasted while also making up lies like it's still the 1930s. His stupidity and maliciousness culminated in the construction of the Vostochny space launch facility that ate billions of rubles in taxpayer money(a lot of which went into Rogozin's pockets) and took 11 years(!!!) to fully complete. Being a spaceflight fan as a russian is depressing right now, especially with decades of NASA and RosKosmos cooperation being ended due to political conflicts.
The device in the front at 3:26 is a Soviet copy of Nintendo Game & Watch game (themed with characters from a Soviet copy of Tom & Jerry/Merry Melodies cartoons). Kind of fitting for a Buran visualization.
"The Most Impressive Thing the Soviets Ever Built" Soviets: - Pressure Suit - Space Suits - Electric Rocket Engine - Single Rotor & Coaxial Rotor Helicopter - Stealth Jet Technology - Multistage Rockets - Cellphones - Fission & Fusion Reactors - Artificial Satelites & Spaceports - Tetris The list will go on & on. Soviets were in fact, pioneers of our time, from a wartorn rural backwater unrecognized by everyone in the 20s to spacefaring civilization in the 60s leading in technological advancement while providing better quality of life to all of its citizens at the same time, the only nation willing to be a catalyst to the paranoid warmongering USA, all lost because of corrupt olligarchs who dissolved the Union against 90% of its people's will & turned a prosperous society into a fragmented capitalist hell hole.
"providing better quality of life to all of its citizens at the same time" I'd ask my friends grandfather about this but he disappeared in the 50's. His crime was owning land. "prosperous society" no. just no. You are incorrect on levels you're not even capable to comprehend. Don't act like you have any idea what it was like to live your life under red flags. Go and ask those who did. Oh wait, you can't. They're fucking dead in a mass grave in Siberia.
When there are super heavy rockets, there are always plans for deep space missions. Korolev wanted to go to Mars using his N1. Glushko had Energia and could have built Vulkan (it could send up to 200 ton to LEO)
@alexander-the-ok Your anecdote of meeting the Russian soldiers reminds me of my trip through Russia in 2016. We met some great people, and definitely connected despite the cultural differences and the tensions present at that time. Sad to think that the divisions have been deepened so much.
Wow, that was an impressive and well researched video! I am a huge space nerd and knew about buran and it's history, but I did learn lots of new stuff! Thank you. Keep making videos like this!
What I’ve been told, from coders/developers born in the Soviet Union, was that they believed their superior ability for coding came from the fact that they all mostly learned how to code on paper as they didn’t have enough physical computer hardware to learn on the actual hardware. So they would learn by writing programs out on paper & then these would be checked by instructors (and supposedly once they got to an advanced enough level would be tested on actual hardware). Learning this way, according to the (professionally successful) developers I spoke to resulted in them developing a very robust understanding of how code would be interpreted by a computer & thus how to effectively break tasks down & structure them in an effective order (as they couldn’t just throw something together, hit execute and debug step by step). That being said I have also heard of people (specifically my dad) who took advantage of this to half ass code they knew wasn’t going to work, but was probably too complicated for instructors for properly vet (given the volume they would have to go through for an entire class).
Also - when I first started watching this video my initial thought about the software/auto pilot was “a lot of that (control surface manipulation) probably could be done ‘well enough’ using PID logic” which is quite simple and robust. You’d have to do some testing to determine the best values to use (and probably different values to be used at various phases of flight), but overall quite simple. The navigation aspect would probably be a larger task (interpret that however you will). I would guess it would be a cascading decision tree style process.
@@fragdude here is a documentary (part of it inserted at 52:17) about the development of the Buran automated control system, sorry for the Google translation ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
"Soviets were paranoid" and Reagan in the same sentence... it should be, the soviets were 100 percent correct in their opinion about the choice of American presidents. Maybe you should also tame your enthusiasm to hate on soviets, this isn't deserved but completely cartoonish, its 1980 and Stalin isn't there for almost half of the century.
@@JohnWilliamNowak Maybe because i didn't bother looking up the correct year for yt comment that gets the point across as it is? Now i wonder, do you care so much about Stalins date of death because you have it tattooed on your face or did you come to represent the gommmunism bad crowd?
The one mistake about Buran is the talking about it software. It was a great soviet mythology. I had have closed connection to persons which institutes and bureaus developed this code. Program was definitely written on assembly, other languages was never used anymore. No one who be part of dragon team couldn't provide any facts or document that this language or it origin prol used in buran program.
here is a documentary (part of it inserted at 52:17) about the development of the Buran automated control system, sorry for the Google translation ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
@@андреймарченко-р9ф this is soviet propaganda film, it’s not about the real thing. Because I spoke with person whose university created automatic control system for Buran plane and after talked with person who created Dragon language. Please provide pure documentation instead of videos on RUclips)
Hell yeah. I always wanted to know more about Buran, and now you made a video about it. After your video on the Apollo Guidance Computer, I can't wait to watch this.
Corrections:
12:10 - Semantics mistake. As I explain a few seconds later, Polyus never made it to orbit. I was also suppose to say it is the largest 'unmanned' satellite ever launched.
25:55 - The orbiter shown is OK02.01 Baikal, not 01.02 Ptichka
35:43 - Oops, Roscosmos didn't exist until 1992
43:16 - there is a typo on the diagram: 'Oxidizer'
Roscosmos from 2004)
Getting a full auto-pilot Earth re-rentry, glide, and runway landing first try is actually kinda stunning. I imagine those programmers must've had some wild parties afterwards.
Buran's programming language was interesting in its own right, fully graphical (with text nexus).
🙃
@@AlexKarasev do you have more info into that?
@@AlexKarasevFortran and Cobal have been a noose around old aerospace's neck.
SpaceX got it right the first time too (Dragon 2). Using C and C++, it's almost trivial.
It wasn’t really first try… there was lots of testing.
Before Scott Manley notices, when there is a stage separation animation, Buran shouldn’t be on the top of Energia, it should face the Earth, like the Shuttle did. I launched Buran in KSP like a 100 times, but still made that stupid mistake in the animation
The mistake is mine, not yours Artem. That animation looks SO good, small details like that don’t matter.
You do great work. What programs do you use if you care to share.
@@xinniethep00hmainly Blender. Also Embergen for volumetrics, Davinci for post processing
Still looks beautiful.
Scott can be such a buzz kill 😂
Growing up in USSR, Buran was my obsession. I built a flying model with both, the glider and Energia carrier. Energia was powered by 4x 10N rocket motors and Buran had 2x 5N motors with the parachute deployment charge being used to eject them and transfer the center of gravity form the back of the craft, towards the middle. All of the flight control was fully mechanical. No electronics on board. Just pins, wires and timed charges executing the flight sequence. Buran flaps would automatically deploy on descent and Energia had a parachute. Towards the end, even though I tested Buran by itself, I wasn't sure that the whole system would've survived. Having spent a couple of years building that functioning replica, I didn't have the guts to let it do a full mission that could've destroyed it. I gifted it to a model museum instead. I don't even know who has it now, as it's been over 30 years. All I have are old black and white photos of me posing with it for local newspapers.
Buran, the bad copy of Space Shuttle. USSR stole pretty much everything from the west. Read up on Bukovsky files
Good you do not live there anymore.
Mechanical flight control for a scale model? That sounds extraordinary.
If you want to share the photos with me, I’d share them here in a community post (my email is enquiries@alex-hall.co.uk)
@@Alexander-the-ok Email sent.
@@enilenis Oh I love that photo. Ok I'll send you a proper reply by email a little later (I'm supposed to be working right now unfortunately). Thanks!
I love how in the story what conveniences the Russians we're up to no good is the government project's finances don't add up...
No wonder the CCP is so paranoid!
Gotta hand it to the Soviets, upon figuring out the Shuttle had no real economic incentive they went straight to assuming something truly sinister was afoot, rather than internal politics and bureaucracy bad enough to make even the reds blush.
😂
Well, no. Sinister things were afoot. Shuttle was partly funded by the CIA. That's the reason is was such a phat cow. They said if you don't make it do what we want, we're not funding it, and it never would have happened. It wasn't bad internal politics- It was nefarious internal politics.
US only made it into the space thanks to a Nazi, Werner Von Braun
They couldn't do it. And never did. Remember it's a miracle it returned
For figuring that out and then saying, "We must have our own."
The Mare Ignis inspiration is really clear in the beginning. need more of this kind of stuff on youtube
MOON WAR :D
Also now i need to listen to Vic Tyler's Bomber again
LUNA BURNS
Honestly I came across Mare Ignis whilst making this and proceeded to spend 4 evenings making that intro.
@@Alexander-the-ok well worth it. Btw how did you do the computer screen graphics?
The Buran is probably one of my favorite spacecraft designs. By all means, it should have been a rip off shuttle, but it manged to be more than that in many areas. (though the economic and political situation in the soviet union prevented its use.)
Which indicates how soviet union was viewed vs how it really was clearly then anything else. Way too much stereotypes.
The flexibility of Energia is a design that is difficult not to love. I wonder where spaceflight would be today had they kept flying it.
Its funny.. in a way it made sense that they would just take the glider off NASA and then put the development eggs in the launch system
@@Ph33NIXx Законы физики они для всех в этой реалности одинаковы.
@@JIUNnF Touché, touché indeed.
I used to work with pressurised oxygen. Just cold, just 200 bar. The cleanliness needed was insane. We assembled parts in a laminar flow bench. We had special dispensation to use banned solvents to get everything clean. It was fanatical.
If you'd told me then that you planned to put superheated 500 bar oxygen into a turbine I would have *guaranteed* you that the whole thing would catch fire in milliseconds. I would have been completely certain that it was impossible. I can still barely believe it even though I know it's been done.
Indeed! Soviet metallurgy was unparalleled, most likely the one field they were decades ahead of the West.
Can you tell us more about this amazing and insane work
@@Ariccio123 I pretty much covered it. It was basically pulling gear apart, inspecting it, clean it, replace the orings and seats, lubricate it with oxygen comparable grease, test and return to the customer.
The "clean" was just really careful.
@@raffaeledivora9517 While the west never really adopted oxy rich staged combustion till after the cold war, the west germans had their own oxy rich staged combustion engine in the 60s
@@raffaeledivora9517the family of steels was first developed for the engines of the N-1 Leninsk moon rocket. That rocket finalized the rift between Korolev and Glushko.
Glushko was Korolev's and the Soviets' main rocket engine man. Quite the character who felt overshadowed by Korolev and was saying dismissive things like "with the right engine, a yard fence would fly". He insisted on hypergolic (hence toxic) engines on the N-1 incl. first stage main engines. The inherent simplicity and robustness actually *might* have gotten the Soviets to the manned Moon landing first, but Korolev while by no means any more a tree hugger than your average Soviet executive at the time, felt that hypergolic on such a scale was crossing the line. At a Politbyuro session (top level Soviet meeting) there was a verbal spat where Glushko called Korolev a neatnick / clean freak ("чистоплюй") but the country leadership sided with Korolev.
The N-1 engine design job went to Kuznetsov, a talented aircraft engine designer. He took the moon engine mandate and budget, and seeing that the race was by then unwinnable, and gave mother Russia not the engine she'd asked for but the engine he felt she ought to have. The magnificent closed cycle machine. Watch "The Engine That Came In From The Cold".
The steel alloy that survives in this environment is technically from the "stainless steel" family of brews, but taking the idea of "stainless" to extreme.
The English term "stainless" is very apt. It's not "rustless". Stainless steels cheat rust by forming a boundary layer conceptually similar to aluminum's oxide film. But the physics of a boundary layer is subject to the environment with which the hunk of steel is having that boundary. E.g. if you take certain stainless steels to very high altitude (top if Mt. Everest) the partial oxygen pressure is lower there and counter-intuitively, those steels will no longer be stainless there. So what the Russkis did in that engine was basically create a stainless formulation for a very, very high indeed partial pressure of oxygen.
Hi Alex, Maks from The Energia-Buran Archive here, I really enjoyed the video! You got a lot of stuff right that most don't.
I have a couple of teeny tiny nitpicks and some extra information which I think is worth mentioning.
13:07 you mention that Energia and Polyus launched from site 110, when it was actually the Universal Test Stand and Launch Complex (UKSS) at site 250.
25:55 somewhat confusingly, this orbiter is neither 2.01 nor 1.02. It's 1K "Buran", serial 1.01. It sported the name Baikal on its side until early 1988, when the "Buran" graphic was painted on instead. Orbiter 2.01 never made the journey to Baikonur; it remained at the TMZ factory near Moscow until 2004, when it was moved to a pier near the Khimki reservoir and later moved to Zhukovsky and recently the Vadim Zadorozhny museum.
The four ejection seat version would have most likely used the rails present on the flight deck and extend them to the mid deck, so left and right pairs of seats would be ejected almost in tandem. Vadim Lukashevich has pretty detailed renders of how that might look. The standard procedure for Buran would be to always fly with ejection seats with crews of 2, potentially the aforementioned ejection seats for crews of 4 or no ejection seats for crew sizes between 5 and 10. However, by ~1989 the likelihood of flying crews over 4 was *slim* and by the early 90s flight schedules only really mentioned crews of 2 with ~potential~ for larger crews later.
The AL-31 engines were axed in late 1987/early 1988 and niches in 1.01 and 1.02 were filled in and covered with TPS. Second series orbiters (2.01, 2.02 and 2.03) had aft fuselages with no niches. Igor Sadovskiy, (Deputy Chief Designer at NPO Energia under Boris Gubanov after 1982) in a letter to NPO Energia General Designer Yuri Semenov after the successful maiden orbital flight of the Buran orbiter wrote:
“The possible future installation of VRDU engines, removed due to a shortage of masses, will make it possible to land the vehicle along a flat glide path at any suitable airfield 'like an airplane,' i.e. without the special radio navigation equipment.”
So there might have been a possibility to retrofit them, however small.
Buran would pretty much match the shuttle in payload mass to orbit - the requirement was to match the Shuttle's capability, so the numbers were set at 30 tonnes to 51 deg orbit at 200 km, 20 tonnes to 90 deg at 200 km and 15 tonne return from orbit, which were essentially STS' 1972 specs rounded to the nearest tonne.
Buran could not reach the 28 deg inclination Shuttle launched to - spysats and weapons targeting the USSR would fly on high inclination or polar orbits anyway, which Buran would be able to access and it could deploy Soviet military payloads as large as the American ones to the workable 51 deg inclination. Hypothetically, had Buran launched from Cape Canaveral, it would have been able to carry about 5 tonnes more payload, but of course that would never happen irl so treat it like a piece of trivia.
BUT, it is important to note that the Energia core stage structure was about 7.5 tonnes overweight as of Buran's maiden flight, so the payload capacity would be lower roughly by that amount, certainly for the first couple of flights, i.e. couple of years.
1:12:44 1.01 was destroyed in 2002, not 2003
Sorry for the wall of text ;) I really enjoyed the video, keep up the good work!
Edit: by the magic of RUclips my replies keep disappearing, so I'd like to "reply" to Artem here and say that I'm glad you found the archive useful!
Alright I’m pinning this - thanks very much for the corrections. And thanks VERY much for your work on the archive. It was an essential resource for this video, and I thoroughly recommend anyone reading this comment to go and check it out. There are so many amazing images there.
I’m mad I never thought to correct for launch inclination when considering payload to orbit. That is so obvious in retrospect…..especially considering I discussed it in my Space Shuttle video.
Of course. Sorry, I didn’t realise I hadn’t done that already
@@Alexander-the-ok Thank you! Much appreciated!
Hello! I wanted to thank you for your work on the archive! I was essential during the work on 3D models! And it has a lot of rare and just awesome photos of this program
This. this is what RUclips and the RUclips comment-section was meant to be. this is so cool and wholesome.
Yeah the shuttle espionage was kinda funny.
The Reagan administration had cut the Soviets off from making direct purchases of reports through the Department of Commerce’s National Technical Information Service and the Pentagon’s Defense Technical Information Service.
“Prior to that, they simply went from the Soviet embassy on 16th Street to the Government Printing Office on North Capitol and H Streets, provided the GPO with the name and number of the document they had gotten off the database, paid their money and took the documents back to the embassy,” said one intelligence official.
The KGB was considering dumpster diving or breaking and entering "nekulturni". Why wrinkle your suit if you can honestly come pay for your own copy fair & square? :)
@@JuPiTeR_0211 Quite right: "The swiveling rear exhaust is a licensed design from the Yakovlev design bureau in Russia, which tried it out on the Yak-141 STOVL fighter. It was all or nothing … If the propulsion concept didn’t work, we obviously weren’t going to be competitive.” There was also another big initiative of the sort, the supersonic flight research using the Tu-144 testing platform. ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20000025077/downloads/20000025077.pdf
familiar intro
keep cooking.
haha awesome! Thanks for the inspiration!
THE GOAT IS HERE
is this john howitzer from bean howitzer
your vids are awesome
HORIZON MUST NOT FALL
Excellently done.
I have stories I want to share from when I was in Russia as an aerospace engeering student studying "the design and building of large launch vehicles" at Bauman Institute in the "special machines" department created by Korolov.
Now is not the time. But I do intend to share them here.
Yes. Excellently done.
Fascinating, would love to hear!
Following
I also was an aerospace engineer, I studied at NSTU, and I sincerely admire Buran, it is so sad that it died:(
Having an spacecraft self land safely with 80s societ tech is an insane achievement
If there was something that the soviets where in almost parity with the west was space and rocket tech
they were very strong in control specifically
The Soviets were genuinely better than the USA at several facets of Spaceflight, notably they always managed to do it far cheaper than the USA(largely out of necessity for the smaller Soviet economy) which is why old Soviet rocket designs are some of the most used in history for a variety of customers
And SpaceX still can't figure it out.
Not really. Planes were self landed in the 50s.
Shoutout to the animator for giving us banger visuals EVERY TIME. 10/10, would hire to do marketing for NASA or ESA if I was in charge.
10:25 As far as I understand, the Zenit was retired from service due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine (which did not just start in 2022), as it was manufactured and assembled in Ukraine (Yuzhnoe), even though it had many Russian parts, like the RD-170 engine.
I have always been a fan of the Zenit. The venerable Soyuz requires quite a complex operational set up before launching, including the attachment of the wooden sticks into each combustion chamber for ignition. By contrast, the Zenit was fully automated, it even had an interface for fueling and other purposes (I don't know the details) that was automatically connected by the transporter when bringing the rocket to the launchpad.
It seems plausible that the high degree of automation was one of the factors that made it well-suited for the sea-launch platform.
In Baikonur, there is one pad with a movable tower, which was eventually supposed to be used for manned spaceflights, probably it would have been deemed as a replacement to the Soyuz.
Last thing I heard (and I haven't been up do date for a while), Russia was trying to built a Zenit-like launcher but using only Russian parts, intended to be a Soyuz replacement (Soyuz-5 Irtysh). It would even use the former Zenit launchpad in Baikonur.
I've always found it so fascinating. I uploaded to my channel some rare and hard to find videos of the N1 rocket, as well as Energia-Buran, which were extremely bad quality, even for the time. Since then, much better versions from these videos have surfaced.
here is a documentary about the development of the Burana automated control system, sorry for the Google translation
ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
your production quality just keeps increasing, not specifically an aerospace engineer but i will never pass up the chance to hear about these interesting projects
and shoutout to Artem Tatarchenko i've noticed he does the 3d visuals for a few of your videos they look great
13:46 to give a little more detail- the payload was mouted with the engines facing upwards for reasons i can't remember. It was supposed to perform a 180 degree flip and light its engines before continuing up into orbit. Instead, it flipped 360 degrees, ignited its engines as they faced towards space, and launched itself straight down into the ocean.
“Don’t jump! You have so much to live for!”
“Do a flip!”
What a fantastic documentary about what was clearly the zenith of Soviet, and perhaps world (up to that point), crewed spaceflight. Thank-you!
You got the main point but I am not sure the viewer got it: The Soviet Union developed and built Energia/Buran PARALLEL to the Sojus/Saljut Program! For the US to be par they would have to continue the Apollo/Saturn Program including Skylab into the '90.
here is a documentary (part of it inserted at 52:17) about the development of the Buran automated control system, sorry for the Google translation
ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
I've been playing Tetris DX for over 20 years and I just put it together that it's the Buran that launches when you score over 200k.
I can't express the excitement I felt when I saw this upload. Buran is something that has captured my interest for years and I'm glad it's receiving the respect and coverage it deserves.
Your content is on another level. The production quality, research, commentary, visuals, it's all absolutely tremendous. It's a good day when Alexander the ok uploads
Well done
That intro was just pure awesome too
Intro starts. I think, “what is this? The RUclips algorithm has never known me this well, before.” I pause. I check the title.
I yell, “he’s DONE it!” at nobody in particular.
You’ve done it.
You’ve made a video about Buran.
God fucking bless you, you’ve done it.
I've been waiting for years for a deep dive on the Burran, but Especially the Energia! So stoked for this!
That edit at the beginning of fictional scenario was top
If you liked that you should check out mare ignis
i'm so sad i can't see the premiere cuz it's past my bedtime but i still want to kinda express my feelings
thank you for reigniting my interest in space with your shuttle video, you're partly responsible for my 120 hours in ksp
you might be "the ok" but your essays if i can call them that are really great and the challenger launch decision was the first book i read for myself in about 10 years
i'm glad you blew up with that titan video, i hope you won't need to make anything like that ever again and all your stuff will be about great things humanity did, even if it includes some heartbreaking incidents that could've been prevented (i wasn't even alive when challenger launched but when i was looking at the footages of different STS launches words "go at throttle up" still strike something within me)
anyway, again, you might think of yourself as alexander the ok but you are great and i really like it how you can be both dry and convening a huge spectrum of emotions at the same time
your shuttle video is your magnum opus but with your research, with your love for the topic and with your passion it might change in the future
thanks for doing what you do, i hope there's more to come
Hi. Thanks very much - hope you enjoy it when you have the time to watch.
Yep after the channel first blew up, I tried 2 different directions: one making videos about the ‘best of humanity’ and one making videos about ‘engineering failures’. I tried the latter with a video about Virgin Galctic but I didn’t like making it.
So, I can promise I’ll always focus on success stories. There will always be cautionary tales and lessons in risk along the way (as with the shuttle video). But I’ll never do anything like Oceangate ever again. Well not unless there is another extremely specific incident that falls exactly in my area of expertise!
@@Alexander-the-ok every success comes with or after a bunch of failures
both apollo and souyz had failed their first missions, even tho the apollo one was named the first retrospectively
but apollo landed six times on the moon and gave us one of the most exciting and unbelievable stories of the modern world, and soyuz was responsible for soloing ten years of uninterrupted supplies and crew transfers to the ISS
while we should be in awe of the success of the both projects we also should not forget the failures that led to said success and you covering both is great and important and i'm genuinely happy there's someone like you who covers both aspects and sad i can't support you on patreon (not a question of money but a question of my location, i just don't have a way to pay for it right now)
i'm a bit drunk right now but i would've wanted to say this even if i was sober:
thank you for the work that you do, for videos you produce and for giving it to the world
i spend about half of my conscious life on youtube (both on background and foreground) but you're my favourite channel and i want to see your videos while having nothing that can distract me and grasping for every word, intonation and picture you provide both with the video and things you say, because they can be more bright and colorful than the video itself
again, sorry for the long response and sorry for being intoxicated but while i'm drunk i still only say things i want to say and the thing i want to say right now is thank you
@Alexander-the-ok” best of humanity” would be a great title for a playlist on your channel
That intro was so good! and i'm so excited for the MAKS video, it's such an interesting spaceplane, i love it. Thanks for your work. Buran was very impressive and honestly i'm happy we're seeing its legacy still resonate through Dream Chaser, the RD181 and the now dead zenit.
The well-spoken British man was Sir Peter Ustinov.
I know that voice anywhere since I've watched Discovery's "Super Structures: Antonov 225" documentary.
Yes. No dissing him. I remember his voice from lots of science documentaries of the 1980s and lots of movies before then.
28:04 Peter Ustinov is such a legend. Loved Wings of the Red Star, back when Discovery was good.
Another great upload from an OK Alexander, love the intro a lot of love must have gone into that.
That intro music is a belter
Thank you for this video, I really, really appreciate it.
While I knew the landing had been automated, I wasn't aware of all the details (or that it was westwards!) and those animations about the automated descend are amazing!
here is a documentary (part of it inserted at 52:17) about the development of the Buran automated control system, sorry for the Google translation
ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
26:00 the footage claims that this orbiter is 1.02 Ptichka, but is actually 2.01 Baikal, the third Buran orbiter, never completed. It can be moved by trucks because it's incomplete.
When youtube finishes processing the subtitles I’ll add in a correction for that.
That bit at the end about your experience with Russia not being the "bad guys" really spoke to me. I was born in 2006, and I heard stories of my parents about the cold war, which seemed like a crazy idea to me. After all, Russia helped build the ISS, how could they be the bad guys? I spent my whole life with Russia being the good guys, and although maybe not entirely trustworthy, I certainly didn't consider them to be the enemy. I learned the Russian alphabet so I could read small bits of Russian, which is still useful to this day (I look for some really obscure documents, as I'm sure you do too), and I loved everything about their space program. Now here I am, back in a world where they're the bad guys again, and I feel like celebrating any recent achievements of theirs is siding with the enemy. I was never alive to see Mir in orbit like you did, but I still have a model of it to this day, and every time I look at it, it makes me sad because it's from a time when it felt like the whole world was working together to fly to space, a world we've left behind once again in the last decade.
I grew up during the cold war but never considered the USSR "the enemy" or an "evil empire". In saying that, I'm from NZ so while we are historically western aligned I never felt specifically indoctrinated or propagandized though there clearly would have been a bias in all forms of media. I was actually fascinated by the USSR & my curiosity couldn't be fed enough. I think two things that played a large part in stoking that curiosity were a friends older brothers 1970's-80's era stamp collection which included US & Soviet stamps with the different approach to their art & image they were presenting & walking along a beach in the middle of nowhere in NZ, the bottom of the world, & finding a dark or black can washed up on the shore that had cyrillic writing & that sent my imagination into overdrive. It couldn't have come from a mere fishing trawler, but a disguised fishing trawler on a spy mission🫢, though what it may have spied on down here I couldn't say, electronic communications maybe. That interest went on to become a love for more than a few Russian/Soviet writers etc etc.
If I can offer any advice, take what you're told, or meant to believe, in regards to Russia's current status with a grain of salt. What people may like to believe about Putin, one thing he is not is a fool or prone to act recklessly. He's had to be a wary statesman longer than many others. He's already pointed out why he felt Russia had to invade Ukraine & I haven't heard a thing to say its untrue. Though its a much larger discussion than can be had in this chat there has been many instances of US interference over a long period & despite many complaints or desired discussions Russia has been ignored, which was also counter to understandings that were believed to be in place & understood. For some perspective, it would be like Russia inviting & encouraging Mexico or even more appropriate, Canada, into a Warsaw pact type arrangement, right on the US border & despite any traditional history. If you know your history even a little, whenever the US has a strong desire for another country's "freedom" it usually means the freedom for the US to have a greater slice of their markets or access to their resources, as well as having the contracts to rebuild their recently shattered country. Not to mention how many weapons they can sell off as well. Just saying. Propaganda.
Then you might get the most known modern Russian phrase about space:
Прости нас, Юра, мы всё просрали.
i think its important to remember that the west (the united states in particular) are absolutely not good guys either. its easy to see russians as uniquely evil because we see the atrocities they are commiting in ukraine happen live every day. however, america has the blood of koreans, vietnamese, cambodians, afghans, iraqis, syrians, palastinians, etc. on their hands. american economic policy in venezuala is making life impossible for average venezualans. american oil companies are poisoning rainforests in ecuador and killing anyone who dares protest. american backed dictators around the world are responsible for innumerous genocides, famines, and wars.
They start wars all county around self on fake reasons. Totalitarian shithole, total corruption. Just read news. Russia is most hypocrite state.
5:04 You suggest the Space shuttle was the superior project based on actual utility overlooking the reality “Buran”was specced to transform from it’s flight mode into a snarling mecha-vulture style Jaeger designed as the VERY last line of defence.
The fact that this video despite being hour long (if we talk only about the main part about the systems involved) still feels like a brief overview of the whole Energia, Buran, and related aircraft systems - speaks volumes on how huge, complex and amazing this whole thing was. And it actually was working
Kinda feels like you should make a small series about engineering involved, like 3-part series. Just because of how much there is to talk about
The problem with doing series is nobody ever clicks on a 'part 2' video. My videos are actually all related to each other and cover a lot of follow-on concepts. So I will be revisiting Energia, and late Soviet propulsion design in the future....just under a different video title.
@@Alexander-the-okoh I do.
This is by far the most comprehensive Buran video I’ve had the pleasure of watching. None of the click bait nonsense, just well researched, well presented information. Great work as always
This is the masterpiece. Thank you a lot for this. You know, I walked by the building where Buran's manipulator is, most likely, stored. I knew that there is some old soviet manipulator inside but nobody told me what kind of manipulator it is. I learned it now, 2 years after leaving the country from your channel, that fact is pretty ironical and explains a lot...
As an enthusiast of Soviet postwar tanks and planes, in the Christmas of 2012 my dad gifted me an Antonov An-225 with Buran in 1/500 of Herpa and I was very happy and still today is displayed along other my scale models collection.
I always wish that in the future some model company will release a Buran with Energia rocket, it would be very amazing.
YEAHHHH
"translate to english" lmao
Absolutely amazing spacecraft. It have a lot common features with Space Shuttle, but it never were a real copy of that. There were a lot of different solutions made... And don't forget, that it was a whole rocket complex, Buran-Energia
That's the best explanation and visualisation of the buran approach I've ever seen. And props for finding some really great original footage of both flights of the Energia.
Great video but I do have a slight correction
The rd-180 does not have a perfect record as it has a partial failure. During the launch of Cygnus OA-6 launched on March 23rd, 2016 the rd-180 shut down approximately 6 seconds early. This forced the upper stage to burn for longer thus resulting in a mission success.
Oh yeah I was being a bit 'Soviet' with my definitions there.
And if the statement was made to be talking about Atlas V instead of RD-180, it’s not a perfect record either, but down to the RL-10 on a Centaur shutting down 4 seconds early leaving 2 NOSS satellites in a slightly lower orbit than intended, negatively impacting both the start of operations and overall operating life.
So whichever way you cut the ambiguous statement, whether it’s about Atlas V or RD-180, there’s an engine shutting down a few seconds too early leading to a disputed “100% successful.”
fantastic intro. it's been great seeing your video production improve so much while you maintain the technical scope and quality of your earlier stuff
I am hooting and hollering at my screen about the possibility of an AN-225 video. There's an AN-124 that's been impounded at the airport here for a few years and it's fucking gigantic.
Ah yes, the infamous Volga-Dnepr AN-124 tail no.RA-82078 that had been seized in Toronto-Pearson International Airport for 2 looong years since the war in the East broke out.
I worked for a company that shall remain nameless in North Carolina years ago. We were modifying Sikorsky S-70 (The civilian/generic export version of the UH-60 Blackhawk) helicopters for the UAE. We were putting everything from FLIR and glass cockpit instruments to a rescue hoist and the Dillon M104 mini gun at each crew station. Having been a crew chief/flight engineer on these aircraft in the US Army for almost 10 years, I was actually recruited for the job and I absolutely loved it! I have so many stories and lessons that I learned during that time. I remember being curious as we were getting ready to start the test flight process on the first three aircraft just how the heck we were going to get these things all the way over to Dubai once we got them all finished up. I had never heard of the Antonov before this and I remember seeing pictures of it when the guys that had seen it before were trying to explain just how massive it actually was. Nothing could have prepared me for seeing that thing the first time. I had been in and around C5’s while I was in the Army and they’re impressive for sure, but the Antonov was just something else. We flew the helicopters in a flight of 3 up to Norfolk International Airport in Virginia in the morning and rented a hangar so we could fold the main and tail rotor blades and do the other minor prep work needed to allow us to winch them into the Antonov (side note: there was a VERY interesting and frankly terrifying interaction with some FBI and ICE agents as well as some other feds that didn’t feel the need to identify themselves when panicked civilians in and around the airport called into 911 and said that there were military helicopters that had the “Iranian” flag painted on them flying into Norfolk (150 miles South of DC and home to the largest naval base on the East Coast!). The flags on the tail were obviously not Iranian but I guess they’re similar. Also, we had a pilot and crew chief from the UAE in each of the aircraft along with a pilot and crew chief from our group and we were all in tan flight suits and helmets so, looking back, I kind of understand how that maybe looked a bit sketchy!!!).
The Antonov landed and it was jaw dropping. It was also a Volga-Dnepr aircraft (could easily have been the same one that’s in Toronto now!) and it looked like it was literally just hanging in the sky when it landed. It drew quite a crowd of people when it taxied over to the loading area. We drove a semi into the rear door/ramp after they opened her up and kneeled the landing gear and then dropped the trailer in and drove the truck out the front. We put all of the loose cargo and spares in and then winched the 3 60’s in from the rear. The crew was a rag-tag bunch to say the least! The aircraft was rough. At least it looked that way. Everything was so old and a lot of things were dirty and unkempt. But the important things were taken care of. The crew spoke so/so English, enough to chat with us, and were super proud to show off their baby. I was one of the “lucky” ones that accompanied the aircraft to the UAE to assist in the test flight process after we had returned them to flight configuration. They ended up having this huge elaborate almost air show to welcome the aircraft into the country and we got treated like gods for a week! Anyway, that’s how I stumbled into a trip across the world on the Antonov!! It’s an absolutely incredible plane and it’s definitely from another era. Ever since, I’ve had a love for that plane and it will never go away. I hope that there are still a few left after the war is finished. It would be devastating to lose this piece of history.
Man was I waiting for this video and hot damn did it not disappoint. Absolutely fantastic content Alexander, your quality improves with every video!
Its so unfair that videos this well researched and produced have only netted you 70k subscribers. You deserve more
This is such a weird take, it reads like a neg, or a backhanded compliment. Channels grow slowly and this kind of comment is not helpful.
@@lukeybukey3081 How is that a backhanded compliment? I just said his videos are really good and that I wished they got more recognition. I'm not really sure what else you wanted me to say.
@@sebastiaomendonca1477 apologies if that came across as harsh and especially if there is a language barrier. The construction you used in English reads very negatively, as if subscriber count and views is more important than the exceptional quality of this creator.
70k feels like a ridiculously high number for something I do in my spare time as a hobby tbh.
Fascinating 3D animation and an excellent documentary about Buran.
Correction I'd like to make: the second orbiter was NOT called Ptchika, as far as I can tell, it was actually meant to be called "Burya", which translates to "Storm". Ptchika was simply the nickname it was given before its official designation. It's just Russian for "bird" which I can't imagine being a very impressive name compared to it's counterpart, "Buran", meaning "Blizzard".
Good god your production quality is high. You and Artem do amazing work. One of the best channels I’ve ever discovered on RUclips! Keep it up!
He is back!
Another excellent video. Thank you for putting these together.
I would argue that Buran-Energia's method of booster recovery would have been better than just parity with the Shuttle. Recovery on land means there is no saltwater exposure, which would likely significantly reduce the effort needed for inspection and refurbishment. After all, the Shuttle SRBs were completely dismantled for each reuse, to the point that I don't think "the same booster" actually ever flew twice. And admittedly, it is with an even less maintenance-intensive method and with more modern technology, especially in the engines, but we are currently seeing what on-land/on-droneship booster recovery is doing for SpaceX in terms of economics.
Great work, not seen much of your stuff but I hope you are cutting this up and releasing it in chapters/series too, would give you best of both long and shorter forms of content and the audiences which would be more restrictive in their viwing time.
Great work, deserve so many more subs.
When I was in school (for Aerospace Engineering) I occasionally encountered jokes about the American term for “oxidizer rich combustion” being “engine rich combustion.” Those apparently originated from former Soviet faculty
And apparently the former Soviet faculty members had some *opinions* about injector design…
I mostly watch videos while doing something else, a good deal of them are a sort of a background noise.
Yours i've watched with full concentration. Thank you very much.
God, this ending with the buran start in tetris... I teared up.
This is the best video on Buran that I've ever watched. Now a subscriber. Nicely done.
The author did an excellent job and treated with respect and thoroughness the information that is available on the project. But despite this, I can’t help but get rid of a vague feeling of arrogance towards the USSR that runs through the entire story. Perhaps I can clearly see this, because I live in a country that was once part of it and was once related to this USSR space program.
It’s amazing how the same facts cause such strange interpretations in the West (simply because people were taught to think a certain way about the USSR). For example, discussions about specifically Soviet “paranoia” regarding US developments (a typically American cliche). While "paranoia" was a common reaction for both sides of the Cold War.
And much more. Again, the facts have been researched amazingly, but interpretation... The whole story is permeated with, how to express it, misrepresentation? Of the thoughts of the USSR leadership , the intentions of the heads of the space program, the intentions of the military and so on. And a vague feeling of some arrogance when comparing USSR and USA space technologies. I'm wondering if I'm the only one who feels this way?
It’s worth me pointing out, i generally poke fun at whichever country is the topic of my videos. Prior to this, I made a video absolutely tearing into the US leadership decisions that essentially neutered NASA.
And this, friends, is why I love RUclips. You think you'll ever see something like this on network TV again?
From those of us who remember The Discovery Channel in the 80s and 90s, thank you.
I can’t think of a better channel to do a Buran video. Maybe Paper Skies?
Maybe SkyShips ENG (also same guy from Horizon channel) could do, since the guy is Russian and may have the means to reach the closest Buran display article close by in Moscow.
One of the best videos I've seen on this platform in a long time. Please keep it up :)
Oh yes! Buran video is here! ❤
Another tour de force. Your videos are fantastic, you're fast becoming one of my favourite channels. Keep it up!
This channel is an absolute GEM. You dive into topics that I read about and are never quite satisfied with the amount of information I receive. I receive notifications, and can't click fast enough.
As an engineer, I really appreciate the agnostic approach you take to these topics. What's your background?
As engineers, we appreciate good design, regardless of cultural or national origin (see V2 rocket). Likewise, as engineers, we are critical of blatant failures, regardless of cultural or national origin (see Challenger/Columbia).
I so appreciate this channel!
I used to be an engineer (oil and gas drilling) but I’ve been a data scientist for about 7 years now.
Well, you've done it again, you've made me sad about a project that never got to achieve its full potential, and taught me a lot while doing it. Thank you!
Stunning job! I get the feeling that there was a *lot* of detail that had to be omitted for brevity. You know, doing an 9-hour long video isn't unheard of! (WTYP, Penn Central, yes it really was nearly 9 hours long.)
Also, that intro was really well done. Nice nod to the Reagan-era promo video but with an understated modern feel.
That's a podcast rather than a video, but it's good to see a fellow Liam enjoyer in the comments here.
@@alaeriia01 Looks like we might be in for another. "The Olympics, Part 1" just dropped.
@@alexhajnal107 yep.
The Space Shuttle also had the ability to land by autopilot; although, this was never used on crewed missions. It was only used in landing tests of the orbiter dropped from a 747 in the late ‘70’s.
Alex. You've outdone yourself. Ive been very excited for this vid to come out and it did not disappoint at all. Keep up the great work.
27:10 Cue Paper Skies screaming, "SMEKALKA!"
The intro music and scenario were phenomenal.
27:00 coward.
Thank the lord for the algorithm sometimes. Incredible work. Look forward to browing the rest of your content over the next few days at work.
Why do people actually complain about the Buran being a "copy" of the Shuttle? We are SO concerned with "fairness" on this here our globe that we would rather have slower technological progression.
The same people complain that "all cars look the same nowadays" even though that's the logical conclusion of ever more challenging targets of performance, efficiency, cargo, ergonomics, comfort, and occupant and pedestrian safety.
@@EmyrDerfel True! There really is true, almost singular optimization for your tech. One way is always going to be the best (if not overall, in the critical categories). Therefore the BEST tire and the best frame (hi I know nothing about cars, only aircraft), and the best engine, it makes sense that it would take on a specific physical form because its performance is based on how it travels through an atmosphere.
The "new cars look the same" thing can just be "these are all far away from my frame of reference". Personally, I think all 70s cars look pretty similar, all 80s cars look pretty similar, and all 90s cars look pretty similar.
Yeah all cars from any decade look the same. Its not fair to take "modern cars" and compare them to how cars looked over literally the entire rest of the history of cars!
People don't actually care that all modern cars 'look the same', that's just a less inflammatory way of saying they all look like ass.
Which is true.
loved this... I been preaching your sermon for years. I'm grateful you put this together.
28:38 fairly certain Vladimir Myasishchev considered himself a man. Otherwise, sure, it would be Myasishcheva.
It really blows my mind how a titan sub video pops off and we have these AMAZING long form videos covering the history and technological nerd shit that keeps my mind spinning.
You are a total rockstar! Get this man to 100k!!!
I watched the AN 225 come into the Abbotsford Air Show in 1987. Due to my connections with the rcaf and a pilot who did a test flight in one of their fighter planes, I got a good look inside it. They had two folded up helicopters inside it still and that was after, after removing more than 100 tons of cargo supplies I asked the crewman refueling who was the only one who knew English really well if they could play soccer on the inside and they said a few of the members sometimes played badminton in it. One of my favorite photos of it was doing a huge wide turn past the far end of the Airfield with the lower wing tip within 100 ft of the ground.
I found myself saddened that the Russians in their invasion of Ukraine thought it necessary to destroy this aircraft. Visigoths
New to the channel, amazing stuff. That Intro was badass. I love the style of your videos. I can put them on in the background while working or driving and have excellent listening, or soak it up watching it while in bed. Keep up the great work.
The documentary was amazing, up until the point you touched on modern politics. The russian government isn't trying to forget the Buran, it's just that nowadays RosKosmos consists mostly of corrupt idiots. Rogozin's biggest sin isn't the fact he's allegedly a neonazi, it's that he knows jack sh!t about space industry and enjoyed his time as the head of RosKosmos while it lasted while also making up lies like it's still the 1930s. His stupidity and maliciousness culminated in the construction of the Vostochny space launch facility that ate billions of rubles in taxpayer money(a lot of which went into Rogozin's pockets) and took 11 years(!!!) to fully complete. Being a spaceflight fan as a russian is depressing right now, especially with decades of NASA and RosKosmos cooperation being ended due to political conflicts.
This is exactly how I feel - ‘run by idiots’ is exactly how I’d describe the situation. Buran’s tarnished legacy is just a byproduct of that.
found your channel at the start of the mouth and i have to say your content is great. please keep up the great work and all the best.
Soviet engineering was spectacular
TBF, they probably saved a lot of money just copying the orbiter from the Americans as much as they could
I’d say it was….variable. Buran was definitely spectacular
😆😁😅🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Fantastic as I've come to expect now from you :)
According to your own logic, Buran was better, because it crashed 0 times, while the Space Shuttle exploded twice.
The device in the front at 3:26 is a Soviet copy of Nintendo Game & Watch game (themed with characters from a Soviet copy of Tom & Jerry/Merry Melodies cartoons). Kind of fitting for a Buran visualization.
For those like me who don't speak Metric, that 15 meter per second crosswind is 33.6 miles per hour
thank you. i understood it before and now i don't
Very impressive video, I'm excited to see what you have to say about MAKS because it's always been an interesting vehicle to me.
"The Most Impressive Thing the Soviets Ever Built"
Soviets:
- Pressure Suit
- Space Suits
- Electric Rocket Engine
- Single Rotor & Coaxial Rotor Helicopter
- Stealth Jet Technology
- Multistage Rockets
- Cellphones
- Fission & Fusion Reactors
- Artificial Satelites & Spaceports
- Tetris
The list will go on & on.
Soviets were in fact, pioneers of our time, from a wartorn rural backwater unrecognized by everyone in the 20s to spacefaring civilization in the 60s leading in technological advancement while providing better quality of life to all of its citizens at the same time, the only nation willing to be a catalyst to the paranoid warmongering USA, all lost because of corrupt olligarchs who dissolved the Union against 90% of its people's will & turned a prosperous society into a fragmented capitalist hell hole.
You could say the same things for the Americans. Screw your nostalgic takes on one of two empires during the Cold War...
Fascinating, what’s the name of this operational Soviet stealth jet?
It must be truly stealthy considering it appears to not exist.
"providing better quality of life to all of its citizens at the same time" I'd ask my friends grandfather about this but he disappeared in the 50's. His crime was owning land. "prosperous society" no. just no. You are incorrect on levels you're not even capable to comprehend. Don't act like you have any idea what it was like to live your life under red flags. Go and ask those who did. Oh wait, you can't. They're fucking dead in a mass grave in Siberia.
Yeah the soviets did build some of those. But the buran is still the most impressive thing they built.
Great video, absolutely loved the Avionics segment!!
I noticed at 21:05 that the news reporter mentions a mission to Mars, did the soviets ever plan to launch a rocket to Mars built in orbit?
When there are super heavy rockets, there are always plans for deep space missions. Korolev wanted to go to Mars using his N1. Glushko had Energia and could have built Vulkan (it could send up to 200 ton to LEO)
The intro scenario was fascinating and terrifying - felt too real. Really interesting video, thanks
AWWWWW YEAAAHHHH!
@alexander-the-ok Your anecdote of meeting the Russian soldiers reminds me of my trip through Russia in 2016. We met some great people, and definitely connected despite the cultural differences and the tensions present at that time. Sad to think that the divisions have been deepened so much.
Wow, that was an impressive and well researched video! I am a huge space nerd and knew about buran and it's history, but I did learn lots of new stuff! Thank you. Keep making videos like this!
What I’ve been told, from coders/developers born in the Soviet Union, was that they believed their superior ability for coding came from the fact that they all mostly learned how to code on paper as they didn’t have enough physical computer hardware to learn on the actual hardware.
So they would learn by writing programs out on paper & then these would be checked by instructors (and supposedly once they got to an advanced enough level would be tested on actual hardware). Learning this way, according to the (professionally successful) developers I spoke to resulted in them developing a very robust understanding of how code would be interpreted by a computer & thus how to effectively break tasks down & structure them in an effective order (as they couldn’t just throw something together, hit execute and debug step by step).
That being said I have also heard of people (specifically my dad) who took advantage of this to half ass code they knew wasn’t going to work, but was probably too complicated for instructors for properly vet (given the volume they would have to go through for an entire class).
Also - when I first started watching this video my initial thought about the software/auto pilot was “a lot of that (control surface manipulation) probably could be done ‘well enough’ using PID logic” which is quite simple and robust.
You’d have to do some testing to determine the best values to use (and probably different values to be used at various phases of flight), but overall quite simple.
The navigation aspect would probably be a larger task (interpret that however you will). I would guess it would be a cascading decision tree style process.
@@fragdude here is a documentary (part of it inserted at 52:17) about the development of the Buran automated control system, sorry for the Google translation
ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
Brilliant documentary Alexander, thank you 🙏
"Soviets were paranoid" and Reagan in the same sentence... it should be, the soviets were 100 percent correct in their opinion about the choice of American presidents.
Maybe you should also tame your enthusiasm to hate on soviets, this isn't deserved but completely cartoonish, its 1980 and Stalin isn't there for almost half of the century.
27 years is not "almost half a century."
@@JohnWilliamNowak If you want to be this pedantic then atleast you should count properly because Buran wasn't there in 1980.
@@robertkalinic335 You're the one who brought up 1980.
@@JohnWilliamNowak Maybe because i didn't bother looking up the correct year for yt comment that gets the point across as it is? Now i wonder, do you care so much about Stalins date of death because you have it tattooed on your face or did you come to represent the gommmunism bad crowd?
@@robertkalinic335 Ah, gotcha. Commie simps like you aren't smart enough to do things like "get dates right" or "subtract."
this is SO COOL! That intro was amazing and im so happy this is out. Go buran video!
The one mistake about Buran is the talking about it software. It was a great soviet mythology. I had have closed connection to persons which institutes and bureaus developed this code. Program was definitely written on assembly, other languages was never used anymore. No one who be part of dragon team couldn't provide any facts or document that this language or it origin prol used in buran program.
here is a documentary (part of it inserted at 52:17) about the development of the Buran automated control system, sorry for the Google translation
ruclips.net/video/0kgMnZu9t4E/видео.htmlsi=rCUnIhGcO23SLOxh
@@андреймарченко-р9ф this is soviet propaganda film, it’s not about the real thing. Because I spoke with person whose university created automatic control system for Buran plane and after talked with person who created Dragon language. Please provide pure documentation instead of videos on RUclips)
Hell yeah. I always wanted to know more about Buran, and now you made a video about it. After your video on the Apollo Guidance Computer, I can't wait to watch this.
Videos keep getting better and more interesting. Keep it up😉